


A Mother's Love

by Wecanhaveallthree



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:53:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27083689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wecanhaveallthree/pseuds/Wecanhaveallthree
Summary: Inescapable.
Kudos: 11





	A Mother's Love

Everything has a heart.

This was the first truth Kalain Grovetender had learned, sitting spellbound before the elder Worldsinger all those years ago. If you looked with the right kind of eyes, spoke with the right kind of voice, you could find that heart in anything. Mortal or machine. Living or dead.

He had learned many more truths since then, most of them painful. But he had not forgotten the first and most important.

That made him useful. It kept him alive.

Pressed against Kalain’s cheek, metal thrummed and seared. Resonance echoed from nearby drive-shafts. He could not explain their construction or operation. Crouched in an alcove intended for a smaller creature, blinking sweat out of stinging eyes, the Exodite could barely recall his own name. Yet, instinctively, he could feel the great engine’s straining heartbeat.

“You push too hard,” Kalain spoke, his voice a rasp. He knew better than to ask for water. There would be no relief. “The flight-chamber trembles. There will be a misalignment. No pursuit is worth self-destruction.”

Nothing acknowledged his assessment. Only a silence that dragged on, through seconds into minutes. Kalain kept his eyes down on the rust-speckled grates, his cheek against the burning metal. To meet the eyes of his masters was a worse crime than water-begging. The list of laws and offences was endless, but their hierarchy was strict.

And they were always, always watching. The back of his neck prickled.

In that respect, at least, it reminded Kalain of his lost home. There was nowhere to go that the World Spirit did not see, that he could not feel its attention.

Another truth: the Exodite did not like being watched. Considered. Judged. As though the creatures that held him in thrall had the right. It awoke strange, sourceless anger.

Though he could see into the hearts of others, Kalain still found his own to be a mystery.

“Eldar? Are you still here?”

The voice pierced Kalain’s self-reflection. Higher-pitched than the others, with a sub-vocal burr from machine augmentation. He knew it well.

It belonged to someone who should not be there. There would be punishment, and to his shame, Kalain cringed from it and remained silent. Blisters were better than what would come down on those engaged in unlicensed socialisation. Shame was better than agony - if only just.

“Kalain! Eldar! You must come! The Churn moves!”

The Exodite jerked away from the drive-shaft, leaving behind a bloodied patch of skin. The pain went ignored as he unfolded from his crouch and spun around, eyes wide with fear. A hand went to his breast, not quite covering the grubby sliver of jewel embedded in pale flesh. The Churn moves. The Warp. The ceaseless grasp of She-Who-Thirsts, come for those who had fled the Fall.

“I am-”, Kalain tried to call out, before a fit of coughing rendered speech impossible.

The noise drew her to him. She navigated the maze-like structure of the engine room with an ease Kalain envied. Her black bodyglove was soon in sight.

Monkeigh. That was the word their masters used for her. Her bared arms were a fire-scored weal of pink and shining skin, where old tattoos had burned away. There was no Aeldari grace in her movements. None of the elegance even the most novice of kaul’let dancers displayed on their first harvest performance.

But there was strength in that stocky body. A brute application of muscle and sinew that bulled through forests of cabling to the engineer’s alcove.

“You must come,” she repeated. Kalain did not argue.

The return journey was far easier with help. Though her impatience was obvious, the monkeigh eased the usual obstacles as the Exodite moved through. At any moment, Kalain expected to see the black armour and snub-guns of their masters. The mask-filtered voices that could condemn them. None appeared. None were at their usual stations at all. Scorch-marks on the walls gave ominous hint to their disappearance.

Something other than recent violence worried at Kalain. His steps faltered. He turned to look behind, down the empty corridor. Something was there. Hiding in the shadows, crawling between the cracks of deck plating. Something familiar.

“We are followed,” he said, voice lowered to a whisper.

His guide turned to look, halting a moment, before dismissing the complaint. “There is nothing. All who remain are above. We are saved, Eldar. Do you understand? Saved.”

Kalain shivered, suddenly cold. He could feel a malign attention. He had noticed it in the engineering alcove, dismissed it as the eyes of their masters - but those masters were dead. Had been dead for some time.

“Saved?” he asked, dreading the answer.

“A vessel. Sighted on auspex. We make all speed to salvation.” Her tone softened. “Nothing chases you, Eldar. There are no daemons here.”

Kalain barely heard.

He was reaching out, extending his consciousness towards the familiar presence in a way he had not attempted since the last days of Laith Morr. The memory drove him on, drove him out - the vision of a Maiden World in flames.

The memory forged a connection. Everything has a heart.

Beyond the slave-ship was, indeed, a vessel of sorts. Kalain could feel the ragged edges of it. But rather than metal or plasteel, it was rigid rock, the very heart-stone of a planet. Crystalline tracery veined the colossal structure. Where the ends terminated, they whipped like a forest of silver stalks. He could see the tortured, crater-marked surface in his mind’s eye. Only one thing marked it as an element of a once-whole world.

The apex of a World Shrine. And the presence that inhabited it. The great, towering fury of a ruined spirit. Broken by orbital bombardment, inhabitants stolen by opportunistic slavers, but still - but still -

A mother’s love is eternal. She will always find her children.

Kalain did not have time to cry out before the psychic scream obliterated every soul aboard the voidship.

**++YOU ARE MINE++**


End file.
